CLAT 2016 Topper shares prep tips & section-wise time strategy for the exam

CLAT 2016 results were declared on May 22 and Viraj Ananth of Bengaluru secured All India Rank-1 (AIR-1) in the law entrance exam.

Viraj secured 174.5 marks in CLAT exam and he shared that, “Based on my calculations, I got 19 in Maths, 37 in GK and 50/50 in Legal”.

Shiksha got talking to Viraj on how he managed to get such an impressive score in Common Law Admission Test (CLAT). Read on to know his prep strategy and how you can crack CLAT exam, next year.

Q. Could you tell us your preparation strategy that helped you crack CLAT exam?

Ans. I took a gap year because I couldn’t write the CLAT exam last year as my International Board exams were at the same time.

I started proper preparation for CLAT 2016 by October. To sum up my prep, about 80% of my prep time was dedicated to GK because GK is something that requires consistent preparation.

For Logical Reasoning section, I studied from this really big book by R.S.Aggarwal. It is called Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning by R.S.Aggarwal.

Read more: Books to read for CLAT exam.

For the Legal Section, I exposed myself to a very large number of questions. The way Legal works is that there is a fixed pool from which they draw questions. Often, the same questions are repeated year after year. So, in order to perform well in the Legal section, I ensured that I practiced a vast number of questions and I was familiar with the things. And as luck would have it, most of the questions I practiced were asked in the exam.

Other than that, for Legal, I had to mug up Constitutional Pacts because they are also have GK in the Legal section.

The GK section is divided into two parts, there is – Current Affairs and Static GK. For Static part, I did coaching centre modules and Current Affairs is the part I spent a lot of time on because there is so much information. So, there is this website “GK Today” which is very comprehensive and there is a lot of information there and I feel that really helped me because it covers almost everything and most of the questions come from there. So, I spent a majority of my time studying from that website.

Q. How did you deal with your strengths and your weaknesses while preparing for the exam?

Ans. The key to identifying strengths and weaknesses is that a lot of people simply give their mock tests and leave it at that but that is the worst thing to do. The way you identify your strengths and weaknesses is to analyse your mocks.

So, after giving every mock, I would go through it and see where I am lacking and I would write down all these sections. So, I would make a note, like, this chapter of Maths or these type of Logical questions are the ones in which I make a mistake. Thus, a very important part of your prep is not only giving mocks but analysing your mocks as well because your mocks tell you where you are going wrong.

And the funny thing about CLAT is that you cannot afford to have any weaknesses because it is a very unpredictable exam. For example, I am decent in English but I am weak at Vocabulary. But in CLAT 2016, I was quite fortunate because there were not many questions on Vocabulary.

So, if there were more questions on Vocabulary, I would be atleast  10 ranks below. So, the exam is very unpredictable and you have to make everything your strength, you cannot afford to have any weaknesses.

Read more: How to tackle problem areas & analyse mock tests?

Q. Any advice on how to manage time in CLAT exam?

Ans. Time management is an integral part in an entrance exam. In AILET 2016, I did not perform too well, I got a rank of 100, that is, primarily because I did not manage time well in the exam and wasn’t able to complete the paper. This was because I wasn’t used to the paper format because I practiced for majority part of the exam, online only.

So, time management is a key to performing well in the exam. I am not too strong at Maths but since I was really fast in solving the CLAT exam, I had 40 minutes to solve the Maths questions. Since, I had so much time I could go through the questions slowly and solve them at my pace. 

Q. Did you have a section-wise time strategy for the exam?

Ans. I wouldn’t say that I had a section-wise time strategy because what happens is if the paper in certain sections is longer than usual then having such a time strategy can throw you off.

So, I didn’t have a time strategy but I followed a pattern of sorts. I always attempted Legal first then I would solve the GK questions. I followed this because Legal is my favourite and I am good at it and GK takes no time to solve. So, in about 40 minutes I can solve about half of the paper because these two sections carry a weightage of 100 marks. By following this strategy time was already on my side. Psychologically I already knew that I had one hour 20 minutes to solve the remaining 50% of the paper.

So, I would say find a strategy that works best for you. I am not saying everyone should do this. Start with whatever (section) you are comfortable in and good at. And this would work for you.

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